Hi Asmat and Annie,

Thanks so very much for your thoughts on this – Asmat, I will indeed try contacting the Scarborough Yacht Club, which sounds like a great idea for getting details. Having a carefully ballasted cradle that is then lashed to the boat sounds like a sensible possibility. And Annie, I'll see what I can come up with from those publications.

Only just a couple of weeks ago I tried legs, but there was more to learn. The boat was nicely upright for about 5 minutes… Fortunately it's not a tall boat, so coming over on its side (into soft mud) was not a disaster. I see now that there's a lot more information on the Internet about this than there was seven years ago when I first made plans for legs on this boat. I could've studied that more, recently, before I tried it! And of course, now I've learned a lot from this recent experience.

The cradle possibility is nice because though there could be problems, falling is probably not one of them, and the idea is to set up this arrangement in my home port, so the bulkiness and all is not an issue. I have some concerns about supporting the boat correctly, and the possibility of the boat wearing against the cradle, but it seems like cushioning could help with that.

Thanks again to both of you for your thoughts – I'll keep you all posted on how it proceeds.

Shemaya

If I were making one, I'd lash the cradle to the boat and, as you say, have them both float together.  That way - assuming a relatively level bottom, the slight alteration of position depending on wind strength and direction, should not be a problem. 

If your berth is relatively sheltered, legs might be the way to go: time was when most British boats carried a pair.  They were also used extensively by the wooden luggers in Brittany harbours, which dry out at low water.  The boats didn't have particularly shallow draught, either, and  some of those that are converted to yachts still use legs in harbour.

Does anybody have experience with using – or building – a mooring cradle? What I mean by this is a cradle for a boat, in this case a boat with a long, shallow keel, for use where the boat will dry out with each cycle of the tide. This is not about hauling the boat in order to do work, but about supporting the boat upright when the tide goes out, each time.

My biggest questions are to do with design for the structure itself, and what makes sure that the boat settles into the cradle correctly when the tide goes out, so that the boat does not have to be attended each time? Or is the boat lashed into the cradle, which floats, so that they float together and come down together? I've only been able to find limited material about this on the Internet, but it appears that some kind of mooring cradle arrangement was quite common in the past in some harbors in the UK and perhaps France. I'm in the Northeast US, now with a home on a bay that dries out to mud, with a tide range of about 11 feet.

I've seen photos of the lobster boats that routinely dry out in St. Martin's, New Brunswick, Canada, but that arrangement did not look appropriate for a boat with a keel…

Any and all thoughts and references welcome!

Many thanks,
Shemaya